Benedict Book wrote:One of the key findings was that almost half of all cyclists were in just one city — Melbourne. Despite having more residents, Sydney had less than half the bike riders of its Victorian rival.

“The cycle infrastructure in Melbourne is significantly better than that in Sydney and the culture is very different; drivers are less aggressive and there’s a lot more acceptance of cyclists in Melbourne,” said Prof Petitt.

That lack of cycling infrastructure was also revealed by another metric — the number of women cycling.

Thanks for posting that. I'm both heartened and worried by it: heartened that Fox/News considers it news worthy. And worried by the breathless OMG tone of the article. But it is news.com.au. And it is Sydney.

Petitt, a professor of urban science at UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre, said they looked at 7000 individual cyclists on 120,000 journeys.“This wasn’t just the Lycra clad cycle nuts, it’s the commuting cyclists too,” he told news.com.au.

I found the cyclists whizzing around the GP Circuit at Eastern Creek quite amusing.

I did also note, the data was taken from May 2010 until May 2014, which almost completely covers the period the M2 was closed for the upgrade. It explains the dismal number of blips on the M2 corridor in the study.

gtext wrote:Petitt, a professor of urban science at UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre, said they looked at 7000 individual cyclists on 120,000 journeys.“This wasn’t just the Lycra clad cycle nuts, it’s the commuting cyclists too,” he told news.com.au.

Lost me there with the "Lycra clad cycle nuts" comment.

Yeah, that comment is BS isn't it? I mean some of the most dedicated commuter riders, look who they are. Commuting all the time, every day, regardless of weather, but somehow they apparently aren't commuting cyclists because some fool from a university says so.

All riders who commute to work, no matter what they ride, or how they are dressed for the commute count equally. And until we stop allowing ourselves to be divided by the media and Professors like this guy, we'll be in the same bad predicament that we have at the moment.

All our ships must sail in the same direction - we must have a common unified voice or we'll continue to get these idiot politicians foisting upon us crappy laws designed to win favour with News Limited readers, radio shock-jocks and others alike.

Both of these suffer selection bias. Strava really is "just the Lycra clad cycle nuts".

I'd say that the RiderLog App would have been more likely to include mostly that kind of rider anyway, as you had to specifically sign up to the app for the purpose of collecting this data as part of the research. I did note that the dataset obviously included this group, as you can see them racing around Eastern Creek in the heatmap.

Your average commuter probably doesn't even have a bicycle computer on at all, so they'll be missing from any sample. Strava would provide a much larger sample size than the RiderLog. I know that the M2 Upgrade folks used Strava Heatmaps to identify where cyclists rode (so that they could completely ignore the results and provide the worst possible detour). I just though that 120,000 rides over 4 years is really not that much. It's only just under 83 trips logged per day for the whole of Australia

Sampling bias specifically addressing bicycling behaviour from smartphone application surveys was the topic of a study developed by [18]. Bias occurs when the demographic characteristics of the smartphone application users do not match the characteristics of the greater bicycling population, and it is mostly caused by the volunteered nature of the sample recruitment. Comparing smartphone application samples (self-selected sample) to traditional travel surveys (statistically defined sample) for seven cities in the USA, [18] identified that smartphones tended to under-sample females, older adults, and lower-income populations, and to oversample some minority ethnicity populations. Despite this, the study concludes a promising future for smartphone crowdsourced bicycling data, based on the increasing adoption of smartphones, and the much larger number of records produced when compared to bicycling representation in traditional travel survey. This implies, however, that the bias of any crowdsourced data should be assessed and informed to the data users, so analysis and decision-making based on the data takes the bias into consideration.

mikesbytes wrote:"just the Lycra clad cycle nuts" is no different to saying "nigger". The term has been used to out group and devalue cyclists based simply on their decision to wear cycling clothing while cycling

I don't commute on my bike, I only ride for fun (and fitness), and I usually wear lycra when I am riding my roadie, which is most of the time. I also read these threads regularly and contribute occasionally. "Lycra clad cycle nut" seems like a pretty fair description of me. Why should I be offended by it?

Don't get the issue of wearing lycra, it's fabric made for a purpose.....it's a sporting fabric made for keeping the muscles warm and whisking away sweat....yeah it might make some blokes look like they are all out front but no more than budgie smugglers which i reckon are many times worse for showing the size of under carriage. How many women do we see go about their normal day down the street, in shopping malls, picking kids up from school in their Active wear with many of them having body's that really stretch the fabric to it's fullest hugging capabilities and often beyond

mikesbytes wrote:"just the Lycra clad cycle nuts" is no different to saying "nigger". The term has been used to out group and devalue cyclists based simply on their decision to wear cycling clothing while cycling

I don't commute on my bike, I only ride for fun (and fitness), and I usually wear lycra when I am riding my roadie, which is most of the time. I also read these threads regularly and contribute occasionally. "Lycra clad cycle nut" seems like a pretty fair description of me. Why should I be offended by it?

You are seeing "Lycra clad cycle nut" in a positive fashion, such as being a cycle sports enthusiast

However

They are using term is to devalue your rights to use the road, without you doing anything wrong. You are guilty of heinous crimes simply based on your appearance. It's another way to outgroup and hate you.

"The Lycra clad cycle nut didn't ring their bell when the dog ran over the cycle path" vs"The cyclist didn't ring their bell when the dog ran over the cycle path"or better again"The dog ran in front of the cyclist on the cycle path"going the other way, ie outgrouping dog owners"The junkies let their dog run around off the leash and it ran in front of the cyclist on the cycle path"

gtext wrote:Petitt, a professor of urban science at UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre, said they looked at 7000 individual cyclists on 120,000 journeys.“This wasn’t just the Lycra clad cycle nuts, it’s the commuting cyclists too,” he told news.com.au.

Lost me there with the "Lycra clad cycle nuts" comment.

I wear lycra. But if anyone seeing me in it then thinks that that serves to conveniently group me into some box of like-minded riders then they would clearly be wrong.

Thanks for the link. I've had a quick skim (so keep the salt handy) but it still seems that they need to get some controls by genuinely randomly sampling cyclists. That is, leaping out in front of them. (Riderlog is a BV app which people chose to use or not to use. )

mikesbytes wrote:You are seeing "Lycra clad cycle nut" in a positive fashion, such as being a cycle sports enthusiast

However

They are using term is to devalue your rights to use the road, without you doing anything wrong. You are guilty of heinous crimes simply based on your appearance. It's another way to outgroup and hate you.

"The Lycra clad cycle nut didn't ring their bell when the dog ran over the cycle path" vs"The cyclist didn't ring their bell when the dog ran over the cycle path"or better again"The dog ran in front of the cyclist on the cycle path"going the other way, ie outgrouping dog owners"The junkies let their dog run around off the leash and it ran in front of the cyclist on the cycle path"

Thank you for your detailed response, but I am not convinced. I am quite happy to draw my inspiration from President Trump's deplorables, and wear "Lycra clad cycle nut" as a badge of honour.

I have a theory about name-calling and offence-taking. A gay friend of mine (not that sort of friend) once told me that the term "gay" originally gained traction as an acronym for "good-as-you", partly in an attempt to bolster the self-esteem of the many gay people who (sadly) believed themselves to be inferior to their "straight" contemporaries. If you attach a negative label to a member of an out group who already has self-esteem issues, you are reinforcing what they already believe about themselves - hence the offence!

For myself, I will grudgingly admit to being (ever so slightly) inferior to the likes of Chris Froome in one specific attribute, but, in general terms, I am inferior to nobody. Therefore I cannot be offended by a negative label.

Both of these suffer selection bias. Strava really is "just the Lycra clad cycle nuts".

So basically it is selection bias because it didn't sample the data that you wanted it to sample. So you'd prefer it to have selection bias the other way. How is that realistic?

Disclaimer: It didn't sample me (I don't use any of those kinds of apps), yet I commute.

Thoglette wrote:Thanks for the link. I've had a quick skim (so keep the salt handy) but it still seems that they need to get some controls by genuinely randomly sampling cyclists. That is, leaping out in front of them. (Riderlog is a BV app which people chose to use or not to use. )

But any serious research is a welcome change.

Randomly leaping out in front of people? Yeah, that's going to get a lot of positive responses.

gtext wrote:Petitt, a professor of urban science at UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre, said they looked at 7000 individual cyclists on 120,000 journeys.“This wasn’t just the Lycra clad cycle nuts, it’s the commuting cyclists too,” he told news.com.au.

Lost me there with the "Lycra clad cycle nuts" comment.

I wear lycra. But if anyone seeing me in it then thinks that that serves to conveniently group me into some box of like-minded riders then they would clearly be wrong.

(Yeah. It IS me. The familiar crocs give it away.)

Love it!

Foo

I don't suffer fools easily and so long as you have done your best,you should have no regrets.Goal 6000km

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